© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

A modest proposal to import politicians

TIME to get rid of that silly section in the Constitution that says Australian federal parliamentarians can’t hold citizenship of foreign nations. Not because so many of our pollies seem to come from other lands and it’s sad to think of losing them because they may have forgotten to renounce their alternative allegiances. No, we need to ditch that silly rule because of the tremendous economic advantages.

Over the past couple of decades of globalisation Australia has benefited, so big business says, from exporting just about every job imaginable. I get a shock now if I phone any large organisation and hear an Aussie accent. I’m so used to talking to friendly folk in Mumbai or Manila that Aussie voices on the phone unsettle me. And with big companies getting those you-beaut 457 visas to bring in cheap foreign labour for every job going you can see that we Australian taxpayers – those of us left – have to join the trend or get left behind.

We are employers, right? We employ the members of parliament who then employ public servants on our behalf and the whole process is supposed to be for our benefit. Clearly something is going wrong. The parliamentarians aren’t working for us, their employers, but are moonlighting for media moguls, digging in for the mining corporations, and basically doing the bidding of anybody who will offer them or their parties those sweet extra-curricular inducements that obviously matter more than the bread and butter salaries, perks and pensions we pay them.

Time for taxpayers to act like real employers

It’s time for us to act like a proper employer and start to shop for talent on the open global labour market. It’s painfully clear that as things stand we only get the monkeys the big parties put up as candidates, and the big parties are already bought and paid for by their donors. If our interests and the interests of the rich donors coincide then all is good. But as soon as our interests diverge – which is most of the time – then as far as the pollies are concerned it’s overboard with the voters and tea and biscuits all afternoon with the donors.

Here’s my plan to fix all that: First, we register a new political party. Call it whatever you like. The name doesn’t matter.

Then we set up a labour hire company on a one-vote, one-share basis. You can’t sell your shares and you can’t transfer them. Just a dollar a year to be in. That’s revenue of about $20million a year, which should cover expenses, including my modest consultancy fee. Corporate headquarters in the Cayman Islands, of course. Got to play it by the book.

Import cheap workers to fill the parliament

Step three: get a heap of 457 visas and import enough cheap workers to fill up Parliament. We field them as candidates in every electorate and we vote them in. After that the deal is they work only for us. Any moonlighting for the banks, the mining industry, media conglomerates or any other corporate interests and they’re in breach of their contracts and off to Manus Island with them. There’s plenty more in the queue who’ll be only too glad to take their place, on our terms. Otherwise, all our new Home Brand Party parliamentarians have to do is play nice by us and they get to go home after four years with a big cheque. No second terms allowed.

Could they do the job?, I hear you ask. Could they do any worse than the current crop?, I reply. Case rests.

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